James David van Oppen, Tim Coats, Simon Conroy, Sarah Hayden, Pieter Heeren, Carolyn Hullick, Shan Liu, Jacinta Lucke, Bill Lukin, Rosa McNamara, Don Melady, Simon P Mooijaart, Tony Rosen, Jay Banerjee
{"title":"Person-centred decisions in emergency care for older people living with frailty: principles and practice.","authors":"James David van Oppen, Tim Coats, Simon Conroy, Sarah Hayden, Pieter Heeren, Carolyn Hullick, Shan Liu, Jacinta Lucke, Bill Lukin, Rosa McNamara, Don Melady, Simon P Mooijaart, Tony Rosen, Jay Banerjee","doi":"10.1136/emermed-2024-213898","DOIUrl":"10.1136/emermed-2024-213898","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Older people living with frailty are frequent users of emergency care and have multiple and complex problems. Typical evidence-based guidelines and protocols provide guidance for the management of single and simple acute issues. Meanwhile, person-centred care orientates interventions around the perspectives of the individual. Using a case vignette, we illustrate the potential pitfalls of applying exclusively either evidence-based or person-centred care in isolation, as this may trigger inappropriate clinical processes or place undue onus on patients and families. We instead advocate for delivering a combined evidence-based, person-centred approach to healthcare which considers the person's situation and values, apparent problem and available options.</p>","PeriodicalId":11532,"journal":{"name":"Emergency Medicine Journal","volume":" ","pages":"694-699"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141765736","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Joshua Wren, Steve Goodacre, Abdullah Pandor, Munira Essat, Mark Clowes, Graham Cooper, Robert Hinchliffe, Matthew J Reed, Steven Thomas, Sarah Wilson
{"title":"Diagnostic accuracy of alternative biomarkers for acute aortic syndrome: a systematic review.","authors":"Joshua Wren, Steve Goodacre, Abdullah Pandor, Munira Essat, Mark Clowes, Graham Cooper, Robert Hinchliffe, Matthew J Reed, Steven Thomas, Sarah Wilson","doi":"10.1136/emermed-2023-213772","DOIUrl":"10.1136/emermed-2023-213772","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>D-dimer is the only biomarker currently recommended in guidelines for the diagnosis of acute aortic syndrome (AAS). We undertook a systematic review to determine whether any alternative biomarkers could be useful in AAS diagnosis.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We searched electronic databases (including MEDLINE, EMBASE and the Cochrane Library) from inception to February 2024. Diagnostic studies were eligible if they examined biomarkers other than D-dimer for diagnosing AAS compared with a reference standard test in people presenting to the ED with symptoms of AAS. Case-control studies were identified but excluded due to high risk of bias. Selection of studies, data extraction and risk of bias assessments using the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies 2 (QUADAS-2) tool were undertaken independently by at least two reviewers. We used narrative synthesis to summarise the findings.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>We identified 2017 citations, included 13 cohort studies (n=76-999), and excluded 38 case-control studies. Methodological quality was variable, with most included studies having unclear or high risk of bias and applicability concerns in at least one item of the QUADAS-2 tool. Only two studies reported biomarkers with sensitivity and specificity comparable to D-dimer (ie, >90% and >50%, respectively). Wang <i>et al</i> reported 99.1% sensitivity and 84.9% specificity for soluble ST2; however, these findings conflicted with estimates of 58% sensitivity and 70.8% specificity reported in another study. Chun and Siu reported 95.6% sensitivity and 56.1% specificity for neutrophil count, but this has not been confirmed elsewhere.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>There are many potential alternative biomarkers for AAS but few have been evaluated in more than one study, study designs are often weak and reported biomarker accuracy is modest or inconsistent between studies. Alternative biomarkers to D-dimer are not ready for routine clinical use.</p><p><strong>Prospero registration number: </strong>CRD42022252121.</p>","PeriodicalId":11532,"journal":{"name":"Emergency Medicine Journal","volume":" ","pages":"678-685"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11503200/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141897119","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Paediatric emergency medicine in the UK: are we meeting the needs of our children today? A descriptive workforce survey 2006-2023.","authors":"Anne Frampton, Rachel Jenner","doi":"10.1136/emermed-2024-214158","DOIUrl":"10.1136/emermed-2024-214158","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":11532,"journal":{"name":"Emergency Medicine Journal","volume":" ","pages":"676-677"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142016717","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Joshua Wren, Modurodoluwa Adetola, Emily Ainsworth, Megan Doherty, Ali Hussain, Andrew Scott, Lydia Mary Joy Whalley, Steve Goodacre
{"title":"Triage measurements in the emergency department overestimate blood pressure.","authors":"Joshua Wren, Modurodoluwa Adetola, Emily Ainsworth, Megan Doherty, Ali Hussain, Andrew Scott, Lydia Mary Joy Whalley, Steve Goodacre","doi":"10.1136/emermed-2024-213980","DOIUrl":"10.1136/emermed-2024-213980","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":11532,"journal":{"name":"Emergency Medicine Journal","volume":" ","pages":"689-690"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142016718","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Charmaine Cunningham, Marietjie Vosloo, Lee Wallis
{"title":"It's a battlefield! A thematic analysis of narratives shared in Cape Town emergency departments.","authors":"Charmaine Cunningham, Marietjie Vosloo, Lee Wallis","doi":"10.1136/emermed-2023-213416","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/emermed-2023-213416","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>The Emergency Department(ED) team need to make sense of an ever-changing dynamic environment. The stories people tell about everyday occurrences are central to how sense-making occurs. These stories also contribute to organisational culture, with the frequently told narratives maintaining organisational identity and shaping behaviour. By capturing stories in the ED, valuable insights can be gained into organisational culture and identity.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Non-random purposive sampling was used to recruit doctors and nurses from EDs in five hospitals in Cape Town. Data collection took place over 8 weeks between June and August 2018. Participants were asked to tell a short descriptive narrative, provide a title for their story and create a metaphor to describe working in the ED. Data were captured using the SenseMaker Collector tool, and stories were exported into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet for analysis. An inductive thematic analysis was undertaken to discover the dominant themes.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Stories were collected from 89 participants. Five did not meet the inclusion criteria and were excluded. Four themes were identified. The theme <i>'the usual chaos'</i> included stories about everyday challenges, clinical situations and the difficulties in managing patients with acute behavioural disturbance and those with mental health disorders in the ED. '<i>There is no help'</i> included stories about a perceived lack of support from the rest of the hospital and healthcare system, whereas '<i>set up to fail'</i> referred to characteristics of the ED, including crowding and boarders. The fourth theme demonstrated a pervasive '<i>war-like mentality'</i> shared among professional groups in the ED.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Considering the ED as a socially constructed verbal system, we identified stories that used war-like metaphors, and related staff feelings of being unsupported and disconnected. The findings are concerning from an organisational perspective. The next step is to facilitate a participative process to strategically shape future narratives.</p>","PeriodicalId":11532,"journal":{"name":"Emergency Medicine Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142497177","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sudden onset of pruritic crusty skin alterations in a patient with lung cancer and renal impairment.","authors":"Yongxing Fang, Marie-Charlotte Brüggen, Matthias Möhrenschlager","doi":"10.1136/emermed-2024-214209","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/emermed-2024-214209","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":11532,"journal":{"name":"Emergency Medicine Journal","volume":"41 11","pages":"661-677"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142497180","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rajendra Raman, Tom Beddis, Paul Bonhomme, Maggie Currer, Daniel Day, Chloe Haigh, Elspeth Pitt, Alexander Robertson, Heather Robertson, Bappa Roy, Jennifer Wood
{"title":"Nettle-induced Urticaria Treatment Study (NUTS): demonstrating the joy of research through a randomised, blinded, placebo-controlled trial.","authors":"Rajendra Raman, Tom Beddis, Paul Bonhomme, Maggie Currer, Daniel Day, Chloe Haigh, Elspeth Pitt, Alexander Robertson, Heather Robertson, Bappa Roy, Jennifer Wood","doi":"10.1136/emermed-2024-213915","DOIUrl":"10.1136/emermed-2024-213915","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The use of dock leaves to ease the discomfort of nettle stings is a well-known folk remedy in the British Isles, yet has never been tested in a clinical trial. A group of Emergency Department doctors designed and conducted the Nettle-induced Urticaria Treatment Study (NUTS) as a research training and team-building exercise to address this gap in the Emergency Medicine evidence base.</p>","PeriodicalId":11532,"journal":{"name":"Emergency Medicine Journal","volume":" ","pages":"691-693"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2024-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141792235","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Can levels of neuron-specific enolase be used in the diagnostic workup of possible cauda equina syndrome?","authors":"Emily Nicholson, Tom Jaconelli, Steven Crane","doi":"10.1136/emermed-2024-214288","DOIUrl":"10.1136/emermed-2024-214288","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>A shortcut review of the literature was carried out to examine whether the measurement of neuron-specific enolase (NSE) can be used as a marker to exclude spinal cord, cauda equina or other significant spinal nerve root compression. 132 papers were found of which 4 included data on patients relevant to the clinical question, these are discussed in the paper. The author, date and country of publication, patient group studied, study type, relevant outcomes, results and study weaknesses of the best papers are tabulated. The clinical bottom line is that to date there is no evidence to suggest that measurement of NSE would be beneficial in clinical practice to rule out compression.</p>","PeriodicalId":11532,"journal":{"name":"Emergency Medicine Journal","volume":" ","pages":"700-701"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141995540","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Bart Gerard Jan Candel, Laura N Visser, Ewoud Ter Avest, Milan L Ridderikhof, Bas De Groot, Rens Jacobs, Saskia Weltings, Rolf H H Groenwold, Leti van Bodegom, Wilbert B van den Hout, Marleen Kemper, Markus W Hollmann
{"title":"Efficacy of an erector spinae plane block for renal colic: a systematic review and meta-analysis.","authors":"Bart Gerard Jan Candel, Laura N Visser, Ewoud Ter Avest, Milan L Ridderikhof, Bas De Groot, Rens Jacobs, Saskia Weltings, Rolf H H Groenwold, Leti van Bodegom, Wilbert B van den Hout, Marleen Kemper, Markus W Hollmann","doi":"10.1136/emermed-2024-214321","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/emermed-2024-214321","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background and aim: </strong>The passage of kidney stones through the ureter creates renal colic, a severe visceral abdominal pain. Renal colic is typically managed with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and opioids. Yet, these treatments often fail to provide adequate pain relief. The erector spinae plane block (ESPB) has emerged as a potential alternative treatment. This systematic review summarises the current body of evidence on the efficacy and safety of ESPB for renal colic in the ED.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and case series of ESPB in ED patients were conducted. PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science and ClinicalTrial.gov databases were electronically searched up to 10 June 2024, for studies that compared ESPB with standard care or placebo. The Cochrane risk of bias-2 tool was used to assess the risk of bias of included studies. Meta-analysis using a random effects model was performed if two or more studies reported the same outcome. The Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation tool was used to assess the certainty of the evidence.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Four studies were included, including two RCTs and two case series. A total of 53 patients received an ESPB, compared with 40 patients who received standard care. All studies were rated as having a high overall risk of bias. Meta-analysis showed a large and significant effect of ESPB on pain reduction after 30 min (standardised mean difference (SMD) -1.41 95% CI -1.90 to -0.91) and after 60 min (SMD -1.94 95% CI -3.36 to -0.52), however the level of evidence was downgraded to very low certainty due to substantial heterogeneity (I<sup>2</sup>=85%), serious concerns of bias and large imprecision. Heterogeneity in other outcome measurements precluded meta-analysis.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Although statistically significant, there is a low certainty regarding the positive effect of ESPB on pain reduction for renal colic in the ED. High-quality RCTs focusing on patient-reported outcomes are needed to establish the merit of ESPB for this indication.</p><p><strong>Prospero registration number: </strong>CRD42024554077.</p>","PeriodicalId":11532,"journal":{"name":"Emergency Medicine Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142460712","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}